Facebook was scared s***less and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects. Why? Because Facebook is essentially about photos, and Instagram had found and attacked Facebook’s Achilles heel — mobile photo sharing.

Disquiet was expressed also by the Mail:

“it could also be the beginning of the end, if the social networking giant decides that its new purchase is more of a threat than an opportunity.”

Mashable thought it augured ill, too:

“For Facebook, buying Instagram looks like one of the smartest acquisitions the company has ever made. But when the news first broke that Facebook had acquired Instagram, my immediate instinct was dread.”

Those kinds of comments come the week after a Wall St Journal investigation into privacy invasion by Facebook app providers. A more general feeling is that Facebook is reaching its IPO at an inflexion point where mobile web access has become more important than desktop, and Facebook is not a born-mobile company.

I wrote a longish post yesterday that bears some relevance. In 2008/2009 I saw in the Nokia ecosystem editing a website on the Symbian OS. I noted yesterday that when Silicon Valley luminaries turned on Nokia you could feel the confidence drain from Nokia executives at all levels. Despite their size and reputation, and knowing they had a strong global strategy, Nokia could not talk or buy its way out.

The online information ecosystem gives extraordinary power to a relatively small group of commentators. It might be different now - the information ecosystem is deeper and wider. But there is a core of it that is restless and wants to move on and as J.J. Colao said here on Forbes the developer community already sees Facebook as "legacy".

I view Om Malik’s article as the beginning of a long bear run on Facebook and its faults and it wouldn’t surprise me to see it escalate just like the anti-Nokia movement did four years ago. For Facebook the timing could be worse, but surely it will be damaging.